Thursday, January 29, 2015

I have fallen in love anew with Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth over the last week or so as I have watched and re-watched it. There are so many things to love about the film. One of them is Olivia Hussey's portrayal of Mary, which is so moving that it is enough to make one want to convert to Catholicism. Hussey herself was 26 years old when she played Mary and unlike other several other Jesus films, she plays Mary both as the teenage bride and the older, agonized mother grieving at the cross.

The Annunciation is one of the most visually arresting scenes in the film, not only because of Hussey's portrayal of an initially confused but ultimately devoted young woman, but also because of the striking choice not to have an actor playing the angel Gabriel. Indeed the name "Gabriel" is not even mentioned and the viewer sees Mary as her mother Anna sees her -- it is one half of a conversation in front of light that is pouring in through the window.

Mary awakes at the sound of the window opening, and the light pouring in, and in a point-of-view shot, Mary looks up to see the window:

As she stands before the window, she converses with the angel, but the viewer, like Anna, sees only one half of the conversation:

And ultimately, Mary kneels in obedience to the angel's message in front of the window:

Here is a clip of the scene:

This motif, of light pouring through windows of a building in which a divine encounter takes place, occurs on several occasions in the film, including the raising of Jairus's daughter. Jesus goes into the young girl's room alone (and not with Peter, James and John and the girls' parents as in Mark 5.40), and light is streaming in the window as Jesus crouches to heal the young girl.

Jesus speaks the words Talitha Cumi (Mark 5.41) and the girl rises. The picture is beautifully composed with light coming in all three windows, and Jesus and Jairus's daughter either side of the middle window:

Incidentally, when the girl is hugged by Jesus, we have a rare shot of Robert Powell smiling with his eyes closed:

The same three-window motif occurs again when Jesus is teaching in the temple (in a scene that is only in the full, over six hour version, and not the abridged version currently found on Netflix):

Jesus is teaching in the temple while a large crowds sits, gazing in wonder, and Zerah (Ian Holm) watches from the sidelines. The dialogue itself is taken from the Sermon on the Mount. Here, Jesus of Nazareth, like most Jesus films breaks up the sermon, relocates it and redistributes a lot of its material. In a tracking shot, the camera shows Jesus teaching with light streaming in three high windows.

Here is a clip of the piece:

One might also include here one of the films most iconic moments, when Pontius Pilate (Rod Steiger) sees Jesus emerging from the light in his doorway -- Ecce Homo:

Pilate is arrested by the sight of the man in the crown of thorns who has now approached him:

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

One of the legendary scenes in Life of Brian features Judean rebels, led by Reg (John Cleese), asking, "What have the Romans done for us?" I have been re-watching Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977) this week and I have been struck by several Brian - Jesus of Nazareth parallels. One of these occurs at about thirty minutes into the film.

The location is Nazareth in about 4 BCE, and the Galileans Jews are discussing oppression by Rome before they are interrupted by Joseph.

"What does Rome give us?" they ask. Here's the clip:

And in case you need a reminder, here's the famous clip from Life of Brian:

Update (Saturday 31 January): Many thanks to Matt Page who has commented over on Bible Films Blog. Among other things, he corrects my reading of the line. It is "What does Rome give us?" and not "What do the Romans give us?" It's interesting that I had harmonized a little to Life of Brian in my transcription, just as scribes of Mark often harmonize to the more familiar Matthean versions of Jesus' sayings!

Thursday, January 22, 2015

In my Jesus in Film class today we focused on Godspell (dir. David Greene, 1973). It's not my favourite Jesus film at all and so in re-viewing it, I was looking for things that might help to improve my impression of it. And I found one major one. The photographing of New York City in this film is really exquisite.

There are many views of New York that are breathtaking, but one scene is especially memorable -- David Greene captures the World Trade Center as construction on it is still in progress. The number is "All for the best". The song features the actors dancing in different areas of New York, including Time Square, where Victor Garber and David Haskell dance in front of their own silhouettes on screen, but the scene ends with the crew dancing on the top of the North Tower:

The panoramic view of New York in the background is remarkable. And just how close to the edge of they?! I would be absolutely terrified. I am guessing that the camera here is itself on the North Tower. When the camera pans back further, the actors are still at the edge of the tower, but now facing in the opposite direction. And here, the viewer can clearly see that construction is ongoing:

Presumably the camera is on a helicopter here? I had wondered if it was on the South Tower, but is that the South Tower in the upper left of the shot? As the camera pans back further, we see several shots of the twin towers. Again, I am assuming this is done on a helicopter:

As the camera pans back further, we see both towers:

And the final shot in the sequence is the long shot of the twin towers against the New York skyline:

Here's that minute or so of remarkable footage:

An article in the Washington Post from 2006 features a brief comment from Victor Garber (Jesus) on this:

"It was really a magical day," he says of filming at the twin towers, and "surreal," too, taking an elevator "as high up as it was done" before having to climb through scaffolding to reach the roof. "It was overwhelming to walk out there."

Nearly three decades later, working in Los Angeles on 9/11, Garber says it took a day or two for the reality of the twin towers' loss and his connection to sink in: "It suddenly dawned on me that we were up there. I can't quite believe it. But you have the soundtrack cover, and there it is -- we're there."

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

For many years, I had a series of web pages which I called "Celluloid Jesus: The Christ Film Web Pages". When we revamped the NT Gateway, back in 2008, these pages did not quite fit the new look and I decided to drop them. I always intended to bring them back as soon as time allowed. This semester I am teaching a course on Jesus in Film at Duke and it seemed to be the perfect excuse to bring them back. Here is the link:

Saturday, January 10, 2015

I'm continuing to rewatch and research King of Kings (1961) ahead of teaching a class on it on Tuesday. TCM has this lovely, short clip of scriptwriter Philip Yordan talking about the film. He tells about how disastrous the script was when he first saw it -- it was just a series of biblical excerpts. Director Nicholas Ray told Yordan that he had no money for the script but that he had his kids' college fund, and that was what he gave to Yordan to write it:

I have been wondering, though, whether there were any academic consultants involved with the film. Like many films of the day, the credits all appear at the beginning and they are not detailed. You're lucky if all the major actors are credited, let alone members of the crew. There are no dolly grips or caterers here! Nor does IMDb's entry help here.

Happily, my friend Peter Groves has been in touch with me this week to let me know that in fact Professor George Kilpatrick was employed as an academic consultant on the picture and even visited the set in Spain. Armed with this knowledge, I noodled around on the net a little and found one or two mentions of this fact, including a Variety Review from December 1960 and a recent article by Tony Williams ("Nicholas Ray's King of Kings", CineAction 76 (Spring 2009)). Williams writes:

Ray and Yordan worked on the screenplay with Catholic Oxford Don the Reverend George Kilpatrick who remained on the set during filming. Ray expressed his indebtedness to this scholar in a letter to Samuel Bronston.

Williams does not give his source for this item, but I'd love to see it, or anything else that details Kilpatrick's involvement.

Update (Sunday, 3.42pm): I am grateful to Matt Page on Twitter and Stephen Goranson in comments for their help in pointing to Williams's source for the above information. It is Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey (translated by Tom Milne; London: Faber and Faber, 1993): 363:

Meanwhile he [Ray] continued working on the script with Jordan and a Catholic priest, the Rev. George Kilpatrick, an Oxford don, who remained on hand throughout filming. In February, he wrote to Bronston to say that, thanks to Kilpatrick, he had solved the dramatic problem of how to treat the trial of Jesus. ‘For the first time since I completed the script of Savage Innocents, I feel like writing again.’

Williams does refer to this book in his footnotes, but not in the precise location where one sees the above quotation. I wonder if Williams' paraphrase of Eisenschitz slightly over-interprets it when he says Kilpatrick "remained on the set" during filming. We know that Kilpatrick visited the set but to "remain on hand" during filming may mean that he was available and in contact throughout, e.g. at the end of a phoneline, but I would be interested to hear more.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

One of the things that happens when you watch a film many times over is that you start spotting things in the background. I was viewing the temptation scene in King of Kings (1961) today, and there is a long shot right over the desert and I think I can see what look like two telegraph poles in the background.

I am currently preparing a class on King of Kings (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1961) for the course on Jesus in Film that I am teaching this semester at Duke. While researching for the course, I came across this delightful piece from British Pathé News on Youtube.

It is the a one and a half minute news item about the U.S. premiere of the film, with footage from both the east and west coast premieres. You see Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus) at about 1:21, and he is looking much more like Captain Pike here than Jesus:

Also of interest is the highlight of Lauren and Preston Tisch, owners of the Loewes Corporation, who gave their names to the NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. It's worth noting also the prominence given to "young and beautiful Brigid Bazlen" who plays Salome. She was only seventeen at the time and never became the big star that they seem to expect here.

The news item gives a sense of just how huge the release of this film was.